COLUMBUS – The trip that four Columbus City Council members took with a lobbyist to watch the Big Ten Championship football game from a suite would have cost about three times the $250 they paid, a travel expert and stadium officials say.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
Ohio ethics laws state that if the difference between the cost paid for the trip and the actual fair market value exceeds $75, officials must pay the difference or disclose it as a gift on their financial-disclosure forms.
Officials with the Ohio Ethics Commission said they cannot say whether they are investigating the trip, but said media reports have made them aware of it, according to a report in the Columbus Dispatch.
The four council members who went, Council President Andrew J. Ginther, Shannon G. Hardin, Michelle M. Mills and Eileen Y. Paley, all eventually paid $250 to watch the Buckeyes beat Wisconsin in early December. Paley and Hardin disclosed the trip on their ethics forms, but Ginther and Mills did not.
The $250, the council members said, covered a chartered bus from Columbus to Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium, a suite ticket, food and alcohol. The suite is owned by Centerplate, a Connecticut-based company that days earlier had been awarded a contract with the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
But Ike Reynolds, owner of Reynolds Travel, which specializes in group trips, said such a package for the 21 people on the trip would cost at least $745 a person: The suite itself would cost $12,000 for a group that large, a price confirmed by an official at Lucas Oil Stadium.